Many people would like to know how to prevent ALS, especially people who have seen multiple members of their families experience the health problem, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neuron disease. Fortunately ALS is preventable, and that’s true, by the way, regardless of whether one carries certain gene mutations that are said to be somehow involved in the creation of ALS.
The basis of ALS prevention is the following. Contrary to the commonly held idea that ALS occurs randomly, ALS is not random at all. ALS occurs when factors and patterns in a person’s life come together in such a way as to create the problem. What this means is that if factors and patterns in a person’s life do not come together in an ALS creating way, the person will not experience ALS.
So to prevent ALS, what you have to do is make sure that you don’t live in an ALS creating way. Instead, you use wellness creating approaches to handling things and live in a wellness creating way.
Here are some of the basics of doing that.
The Basics of Preventing ALS
A key idea underlying ALS prevention is that what is called ALS is really just poor nerve health characterized by progressive degeneration of the nervous system. It’s only natural that one’s nervous system would begin to break down if it’s not healthy. So, much of what you are considering in preventing ALS is how choices you make would affect your health, especially the health of your nerves.
Another thing to realize is that, when genes are involved in the creation of health problems, there are reasons why the genes are doing what they are doing. Genes can express or not express, basically be turned on or off. So ALS prevention involves living in healthy ways to create a health creating gene expression situation.
Finally, key to preventing ALS is understanding that the development and progression of what’s called ALS involves trigger-response cycles. In other words, when someone is experiencing ALS, what’s going on is that something has triggered a response, and the response is a type of response that results in ALS type nerve health issues. So, in general, preventing ALS involves (1) reducing triggers and (2) optimizing responses.
Preventing ALS by Reducing Stress
For instance, one way we can reduce triggers and optimize responses is by seeking to reduce stress. Stress is a factor that commonly contributes to the creation of ALS, and it’s easy to understand that being stressed out all the time is not going to be good for the health of one’s nerves. So, if you want to stay healthy, one thing you can do is to seek to reduce stress.
Part of reducing stress involves realizing that stress has internal as well as external aspects. For instance, you could be relaxing at home and still be stressed by worries, fears, or other internal issues. So, much of reducing stress involves responding internally to issues in ways that don’t stress you out.
The stress underlying the creation of ALS can develop partly as a result of people’s ways of relating and handling their emotions. For instance, by repressing themselves, internalizing issues or acting like so called heroes all the time, people set themselves up for bad health. By consciously or unconsciously choosing to use these approaches, one creates stress and system imbalances that end up wrecking one’s nervous system. This partly explains why seemingly healthy people suddenly and seemingly randomly experience the neuro degeneration called ALS. They repress and repress and put on a brave face until things get to a tipping point and their systems break down.
So the answer here is to prevent ALS by relating in positive, assertive ways. Rather than repressing, internalizing and acting as if everything is OK all the time, which would be an ALS creating approach, express yourself, deal with issues as they come up and work things out. That would be a wellness creating approach.
In general, the strategies one uses in life underlie the creation of what one experiences. One can use either wellness creating strategies or strategies that, while they may seem to solve things, don’t really.
Disconnection and Escape Strategies and ALS
With that in mind, possibly the most important or signature pattern in the creation of ALS is the use of disconnection and escape strategies. These strategies involve doing things like refusing to communicate and avoiding people or issues rather than dealing with them. While one may feel that one is relieving stress by disconnecting or by avoiding dealing with things, often one is just putting off the inevitable or allowing problems to get even worse.
In addition to disconnection and avoidance not being effective life strategies, there is another aspect of their involvement in the creation of ALS that make them key ALS creation strategies. Here’s how it works. ALS involves communication breakdown at the cellular level. Just as people who experience ALS tend to use strategies that create communication breakdown, their neurons avoid and disconnect too, an example of something I call micro matches macro, meaning that people’s cells tend to do as the people do. So if you want your neurons to be healthy, communicate, and work well with each other and with other cells, you need to harness the power of micro matches macro by doing those types of things yourself. For instance, if you have an issue with someone, rather than avoiding the issue or the person, communicate, work things out, and create wellness.
In general the idea of working things out and resolving conflict is key in attaining and maintaining wellness. Whether issues are internal or external, you will not attain or maintain wellness by doing non healing things like punishing, ignoring, disconnecting, lying, leaving or avenging. You will only attain and maintain wellness by resolving.
Another thing that often figures into the creation of ALS is workaholism. It’s one thing to work hard at things. It’s another to work because work is your drug, or worse, because work is a way to escape issues in your life. If you have issues at home, don’t run to work, have three cups of coffee and stay at the office until late. Go home and work things out. Your life and your health will be way better for it.
Preventing ALS and Staying Healthy by Taking Care of Your Body Holistically
Related to this is heavy caffeine use. People who experience ALS often were not sleeping, were running themselves to death, and were using caffeine to help them do it. One guy told me about ALS starting after a period of time during which he was drinking sixty ounces of Mountain Dew a day. Others were drinking massive amounts of cola. Put it this way, if you are too tired to work or drive or whatever, rather than drink an energy drink or having another cup of coffee, consider that what you are feeling means your body needs some healing or recharging, not to be pushed past the breaking point.
In a similar way, medication use is also connected to the creation of ALS. Let’s say you have a health issue such as high blood pressure or chronic pain. The fact that you have such a health issue tends to indicate that something is going on that is not optimal. Something is wrong in your life.
If you take a pill to cope with the health issue, you may get some short term relief. At the same time, something is still wrong in your life and has just been masked by the medication. For instance, if you are experiencing high blood pressure because you are stressed out all the time or are eating junk food constantly, taking blood pressure medication doesn’t really solve the problem. The stress or junk food, or whatever other factor is causing health issues, is still having effects. Sure, your blood pressure is “under control,” but your situation has not truly become healthier.
So, when we take medication, we may experience symptom relief , but we don’t really solve the underlying issues, and wellness has not been attained. Thus, what can happen is that the underlying issues will crop up in another way now, possibly as the type of poor nerve health known as ALS.
So, if you have health problems, while it may make sense to use medication to treat them in the short term, in the long term, look to really solve them holistically by addressing root causes and improving the way you live. That would be the wellness creating approach.
Preventing ALS and Staying Healthy by Watching What You Eat
What you eat can also make a huge difference, and there are two ways in which you can improve your health by improving your diet. One way is by reducing intake of things that hurt you. The other way is by taking in things that support health.
To reduce intake of things that will hurt you, you have to realize that not everything that is legal or sold in a food store is good for you. In fact, many things that people commonly eat are quite damaging to your body.
If you eat highly processed food, meat full of hormones, chicken that was raised in torturous conditions, produce full of pesticides, or products with questionable ingredients such as nitrites or artificial flavors and colors, these foods will damage your nerves and other parts of your body. If you drink large quantities of soda or other things which are full of chemicals that can be hard on your system, you won’t be as healthy as you would be if you didn’t consume these things.
All of these foods contain substances that can have effects that result in disease. The substances can throw of the balance of your system or make it difficult for your system to function properly. The substances can directly cause damage to your nerves or other parts of your body. Finally, the substances can serve as triggers in trigger-response cycles that manifest as progressive breakdown of your nervous system or other parts of your body. Of course, we don’t want any of these things going on in our bodies. So, we have to be careful about what we put into our bodies.
On the other hand, we can foster health by eating foods that do not contain these damaging substances and that do contain things that support health. Of course, eating foods that contain plenty of basic nutrients such as minerals, key fats, and vitamins is going to help our nerves to remain stable and healthy. Other foods go beyond containing key nutrients to containing substances such as antioxidants or anti-inflammatory substances that support health by reducing damage.
So, to prevent ALS, set yourself up for health by working in both directions: reducing intake of damaging foods and being sure to eat foods that support health. Drink water or something healthy, and eat high quality food, such as organically grown fruit.
Our Health Is in Our Hands.
Beyond these things, there is much more you can do to prevent ALS. Other things that contribute to the creation of ALS include depression, anger and negative ways of responding, fear, pride, constant freaking out, ongoing issues related to childhood trauma, and poor self image. You can find some more ALS creation factors and patterns on the “ALS Creation” page at http://www.creatingparadise.net/als_creation.html. To prevent ALS, rather than choosing these ALS creating ways, choose wellness creating ways of handling life.
Our health is in our hands. The better job we do, the healthier we are. By choosing to live in a wellness creating way, we can create a well world where ALS is just a memory.
Healing Chronicles 